


happiness is

by wintervioleteye (hawkguyed)



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: A gift of donuts and coffee, Clint has terrible handwriting, Coulson is secretly an editor, Coulson-POV, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-26
Updated: 2012-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-30 03:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkguyed/pseuds/wintervioleteye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the simple things in between work spaces which makes Phil happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	happiness is

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by... editing, in general. This is completely un-beta-ed (like the bulk of the stuff I write), and I didn't know I had a Coulson-muse to go with my Clint-muse. Title comes from a portion of a Milan Kundera quote from 'Unbearable Lightness of Being'.
> 
> Dedicated to [lucdarling](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lucdarling) for being the inspiration for this!

Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.  
 _\- Jacques Barzun_

It starts a few months after Clint's fourth assignment, after he leaves a messy pile of forms on Phil's desk, obviously done while half awake and missing details that Phil fills in by means of neat little notes in the margins or wherever there is room - a challenge really, considering how Clint's handwriting seems to play Snake with the box. 

It happens again at the end of another week long op, and this form has 'donkey amount' written in one of the boxes. (Phil erases that and fills in the number of personnel involved, he was there the whole time, after all.) 

And again, half a month later, and before they realize, it's already become a strange morning ritual that they've unconsciously slipped into, unless Clint is miles away on a mission or drugged up to his neck in the infirmary. 

Coulson comes in at seven forty-five in the morning to a stack of haphazardly piled forms on his desk and an accompanying cup of steaming hot coffee beside it. Sometimes he finds a bagel in a paper bag, sometimes Clint gets him a box of donuts from the store he likes three blocks down. Coulson doesn't know how Clint does it, because the store only opens at nine and he drives past its shuttered storefront every morning. 

Sometimes he comes in and finds the archer curled up in the corner between his well worn couch and the filing cabinet, fast asleep. 

Phil gets started at eight, flipping through the first few sheets of paperwork Clint scribbles through. The marksman has a strange habit of writing everything down using a pencil - mechanical, judging by the thin strokes - in a scrawl that varies its size as it makes its way across and out of the boxes. 

On a good day, Phil is done in half an hour and the forms will be stacked aside neatly with little notations made with a matching mechanical pencil. Sometimes Clint comes in while he's working and ends up appropriating half his desk to doodle little designs on the reports, sometimes the younger man is content to be the provider of coffee that isn't office sludge, curling up like an oversized cat on the couch clad in a too-large Burlington Bees hoodie and track pants. 

On some of their less than favorable days, Coulson will busy himself with the paperwork after they're ordered out onto the field because he refuses to think about the bruising and lacerations that Clint will sometimes return with, a lattice of shallow crimson or a patchwork of discolored purple and black. The notations he makes are a little more forceful at times like these, and Phil sometimes makes the lead snap as he writes, the words a more angular variation of Clint's almost artistic scrawl. 

He's almost always done by noon, just in time to see Clint stick his head into his office, grin, and prod him about neglecting his stomach. 

Sometimes, the archer brings back a carton of Phil's favorite egg noodles from a store five blocks down, or Phil orders the Thai take-out he knows Clint is fond of from just around the corner, and they eat it in the silence of his office. 

Sometimes, they leave SHIELD Central together for lunch, and by the time they get to the car Clint will have a silly, almost goofy smile on, fingers brushing against Phil’s in the only public display of affection he lets himself get away with. 

If anyone notices, none of them are dumb enough to comment (the last agent who did had suddenly found himself sent to a ridiculously backwater place for half a year, and then stuck at cleaning the archery range for the other half). Some months down the road though, Phil is pretty sure that even he won't be able to stop the hushed whispers and water-cooler gossip about the two of them. 

But even if there is, Phil can’t quite bring himself to care, because he wouldn’t give this up for anything else.


End file.
